Jupiter Ascending (2015) – Review

When I went to see Jupiter Ascending my expectations were quite low, other reviewers had not looked on it well but I got the sense that it could be an enjoyable monstrosity, entertaining because of its badness, as with the Transformers franchise. What I witnessed in the two hours left me stunned.

What amazes me is the lack of foresight that went in to producing this film, I’d like to believe there was a finished script before someone greenlit this movie, but then again that means that someone read the script and decided it would be a good idea to give the Wachowskis $176 MILLION.

In defense of the Wachowskis it was good to see someone trying something new and original especially in the current climate of comic book movies, tween fiction adaptations, and endless sequels and remakes. To be fair there are a lot of ideas set out in the film and it is clear the Wachowskis wanted to build something grand but one can’t help but feel that they bit off more than they could chew, like if Peter Jackson had attempted to cram the Lord of the Rings trilogy into one film. What we end up with is a bloated mess of a film with dull one dimensional characters in predictable scenarios wrapped up in grand set designs and CGI backdrops.

Jupiter Ascending has some of the worst dialogue I have ever heard in a film, at one point Sean Bean’s character delivers a lengthy piece of exposition to Mila Kunis’s character and I couldn’t help myself from dozing off, when I noticed this I tried harder to pay attention but couldn’t tell if he was even using actual words, it was all just dull monotonous droning. There is dialogue in this film that makes discussion of Naboo trade blockades seem like something truly thrilling.

The Character development is virtually nonexistent and the Wachowskis appear to have a strange obsession with showing Jupiter scrubbing toilets. Apart from Jupiter’s time spent in the lavatory she spends much of her time screaming to be rescued or looking doe-eyed at Channing Tatum’s Dog-boy character, Caine Wise. Tatum on the other hand looks perpetually bored while whizzing around on his glowing anti-gravity rollerblades. The standout performance in this film comes from, the 2015 Academy award winner for best performance in a leading role, Eddie Redmayne. Redmayne’s ‘Balem Abrasax is so over the top that he would have been too much for the 1980 Flash Gordon movie (FLASH….AH-AAAAAAA, that one).

A good film review will sum up a film and weigh the good and the bad to try and provide you with what you need to know so you can decide whether you wish to see a film or not. Jupiter ascending is a stunning mess of a film and I sure come December will appear high in the list of worst films of 2015, that said I would encourage everyone to see it purely because it is so bad that it should be witnessed.